Mauro F. Guillén

Global Competition, Institutions, and the Diffusion of Organizational Practices: The International Spread of ISO 9000 Quality Certificates

We use panel data on ISO 9000 quality certification in 85 countries between 1993 and 1998 to better understand the cross-national diffusion of an organizational practice. Following neoinstitutional theory, we focus on the coercive, normative, and mimetic effects that result from the exposure of firms in a given country to a powerful source of critical resources, a common pool of relevant technical knowledge, and the experiences of firms located in other countries. We use social network theory to develop a systematic conceptual understanding of how firms located in different countries influence each others rates of adoption as a result of cohesive and equivalent network relationships. Regression results provide support for our predictions that states and foreign multinationals are the key actors responsible for coercive isomorphism, cohesive trade relationships between countries generate coercive and normative effects, and role-equivalent trade relationships result in learning-based and competitive imitation.

Business Groups in Emerging Economies: A Resource-Based View

Business groups in emerging economies result when entrepreneurs and firms accumulate the capability for repeated industry entry. Such a capability, however, can be maintained as a valuable, rare, a...

Models of management : work, authority, and organization in a comparative perspective

Figures and Tables Preface and Acknowledgments 1: The Comparative Study of Organizational Paradigms 2: The United States: Economic Transformations, Labor Problems, and Organizational Innovations 3: Germany: Modernism, Traditionalism, and Bureaucracy 4: Spain: Eclecticism, Human Relations, and Managerial Authoritarianism in a Less-Developed Country 5: Great Britain: Industrial Retardation, Religious-Humanist Ideals, and the Rise of Social Science 6: Comparing Patterns of Adoption 7: A Historical and Comparative Perspective on Homo Hierarchicus Appendix A: Content Analysis of Journal Articles Appendix B: Comparative Statistics Appendix C: The Adoption of Scientific Management and Human Relations Techniques in the United States Appendix D: A Systematic Comparison of Conditions and Outcomes of Adoption Bibliography Index

Explaining the Global Digital Divide: Economic, Political and Sociological Drivers of Cross-National Internet Use

We argue that the global digital divide, as measured by cross-national differences in Internet use, is the result of the economic, regulatory and sociopolitical characteristics of countries and their evolution over time. We predict Internet use to increase with world-system status, privatization and competition in the telecommunications sector, democracy and cosmopolitanism. Using data on 118 countries from 1997 through 2001, we find relatively robust support for each of our hypotheses. We conclude by exploring the implications of this new, powerful communication medium for the global political economy and for the spread of democracy around the world.

Structural Inertia, Imitation, and Foreign Expansion: South Korean Firms and Business Groups in China, 1987–1995

The foreign expansion of firms is healed as an instance of organizational and strategic change shaped by structural inertia and imitation. A longitudinal analysis of South Korean firms in China sho...

The Limits of Convergence: Globalization and Organizational Change in Argentina, South Korea, and Spain

List of Illustrations ix List of Tables x Preface xi A Note on Sources xv ONE: Organizations, Globalization, and Development 3 PART 1: Development and Organizational Change 25 TWO: Three Paths to Development, Three Responses to Globalization 27 THREE: The Rise and Fall of the Business Groups 59 FOUR: The Role of Small and Medium Enterprises 95 FIVE: Multinationals, Ideology, and Organized Labor 123 PART II: Organizational Change and Performance 157 SIX: Developing Industry: Automobile and Component Manufacturing 159 SEVEN: Developing Services: Banking as an Industry in Its Own Right 183 EIGHT: On Globalization, Convergence, and Diversity 213 APPENDIX: Data and Sources 235 References 243 Index 275

Entrepreneurship and Firm Formation across Countries

The World Bank Group Entrepreneurship Survey measures entrepreneurial activity around the world. The database includes cross-country, time-series data on the number of total and newly registered businesses for 84 countries. This paper finds significant relationships between entrepreneurial activity and indicators of economic and financial development and growth, the quality of the legal and regulatory environment, and governance. The analysis shows the importance of electronic registration procedures to encourage greater business registration. These results can guide effective policymaking and deliver new capabilities for identifying the impact of reforms.

Developing the Internet: entrepreneurship and public policy in Ireland, Singapore, Argentina, and Spain

The Internet has not developed uniformly throughout the world. Data on 141 countries indicate that, after controlling for per capita income and installed telephone lines, cross-national differences in the numbers of Internet users and hosts have to do with favorable conditions for entrepreneurship and investment. We find little evidence that competition and privatization of telecommunications services matters. After examining international patterns of development for the world as a whole, differences between two matched pairs of countries are systematically compared: Ireland and Singapore, and Argentina and Spain. Patterns of entrepreneurship and public policy in each country are shown to have differed systematically, with distinctive consequences for the development of the Internet.

R&D Outsourcing and the Effectiveness of Intangible Investments: Is Proprietary Core Knowledge Walking out of the Door?

Intangible relationship-specific investments can be double-edged swords, as they facilitate not only the governance of business relationships but also undesired knowledge transfers. Building on transaction costs theory and the relational view of alliances, we analyse the effectiveness of these investments in R&D outsourcing agreements from the viewpoint of the client. We argue that, when outsourcing to business firms, the safeguards adopted by the clients to prevent spillovers may reduce the effectiveness of the suppliers specialized investments. Using original survey data from 170 European and US technology-intensive firms, we find that the contribution of these investments to client performance decreases the more a clients core knowledge is required to perform the service, except when outsourcing to non-profits. This suggests that as the appropriability hazards associated with outsourcing to business firms rise, the client is able to capture less value from the suppliers relationship-specific investments.

International Coercion, Emulation and Policy Diffusion: Market-Oriented Infrastructure Reforms, 1977-1999

Why do some countries adopt market-oriented reforms such as deregulation, privatization and liberalization of competition in their infrastructure industries while others do not? Why did the pace of adoption accelerate in the 1990s? Building on neo-institutional theory in sociology, we argue that the domestic adoption of market-oriented reforms is strongly influenced by international pressures of coercion and emulation. We find robust support for these arguments with an event-history analysis of the determinants of reform in the telecommunications and electricity sectors of as many as 205 countries and territories between 1977 and 1999. Our results also suggest that the coercive effect of multilateral lending from the IMF, the World Bank or Regional Development Banks is increasing over time, a finding that is consistent with anecdotal evidence that multilateral organizations have broadened the scope of the conditionality terms specifying market-oriented reforms imposed on borrowing countries. We discuss the possibility that, by pressuring countries into policy reform, cross-national coercion and emulation may not produce ideal outcomes.